The present invention will be described as it relates to insurance accounts management systems and techniques, however, it should be understood to be equally applicable to other industries and records processing systems as well.
Batch processing account management systems have existed for some time. An account can be defined as one or more insurance policies of an insured which are billed and managed together. These batch processing techniques are used to update accounts, e.g. establish receivables, credit payments made to existing or new accounts, change account information and generate appropriate communications for example. These batch processes are typically run at predetermined intervals, e.g. once each cycle. A cycle can be defined as a 24 hour period or any other period defined by business practices for example.
As is well known, during batch processing, access to any account that will be processed with the batch typically must be disadvantageously denied. In other words, accounts to be processed with the batch need to be locked for the duration of processing that batch. Thus, batch processing systems conventionally require these accounts to be locked for a significant amount of time to permit completion of the entire batch, even though processing for any individual account in the batch typically only takes a small percentage of the batch duration. This is because multiple simultaneous access to an account must be avoided to ensure account reliability and confidence, and because there is no conventional way of knowing which account in a batch is currently being processed or will be processed next. Accordingly, access to all accounts that will be effected by the batch process is conventionally denied, e.g. these accounts are locked, for the entire duration of the batch process. Accordingly, these batch processes are typically run in off-hour, when access to account information has traditionally not been required.
For any number of reasons however, as is the case with many industries today, off-hour periods are rapidly being reduced in magnitude and frequency. Hence, opportunities to execute such batch processes, and windows of opportunity for completing them, are rapidly diminishing.
Additionally, it is desirable to have a management and processing system capable of operating in real-time. In other words, it is desirable to have an account management system that fully processes an account as actions are performed in relation to it. As is understood by those possessing ordinary skill in the pertinent art, conventional batch processes are typically incompatible with such a system, as account processing is delayed until an entire batch is run.
A further drawback of conventional batch processing lies in the realization that if any errors or problems are encountered during the batch process, typically the entire batch process must be repeated. In other words the batch in its entirety typically passes or fails.